This is bizzare...playing the game by "not playing the game"

[Cherry Cola]

Acrobatics is what you want. Nothing better than jumping 20ft into the air!

EDIT: FINALLY! I FINALLY BEAT HUBILUB TO A THREAD!!!! IVE BEEN TRYING FOR TWO FREAKING DAYS!!!!!
Now, excuse me, for I am going to go enjoy this moment.

Congratulations, I'm proud of you.

[small]EPILEPSY TIME!!!![/small]

I question that party-method, but sure, go for it. Stare into my Avatar as long as you'd like.

 

[Valiance]

See also: Diablo 2

Agreed 100%;

See also: EvE Online.

 

[lolandrew4]

I've seen my cousin use elastics on his PS2 joystick so he didn't have to drive 100 laps on the ridiculously long track

 

[carpathic]

I am a firm believer that if, in a game, it helps ameliorate the grinding necessary to have a fun, playable character then it is not cheap.

 

[Jekken6]

You can only consider idling in online multiplayer cheap.

 

[KurtzGallahad]

I wouldn't call it bad, though I personally didn't really like oblivion.

 

[Daze]

I wouldn't feel too guilty, especially if the game makes it so easy to exploit. There was a similar thing in Quest 64, where running around raised your agility stat. Considering that you couldn't be attacked in towns, which sometimes gave you wide-open spaces to run around in... yeah, a rubber band was your friend there.

 

[nyx15]

give me a snes with a super game boy cartridge, a turbo pad and 4 pence, porygon anyone?
no need to feel shame, long grindy crap bugs everyone.
and for those of you who don't get the reference then you never tried to get porygon in pokemon red, blue or yellow

 

[NeutralDrow]

I wouldn't feel too guilty, especially if the game makes it so easy to exploit. There was a similar thing in Quest 64, where running around raised your agility stat. Considering that you couldn't be attacked in towns, which sometimes gave you wide-open spaces to run around in... yeah, a rubber band was your friend there.

Shoot! I was ninja'd by a single post.

Yeah, I immediately thought of that after reading the OP. You don't even need the rubber band, actually; if you unplugged the N64 controller while holding the joystick in a direction, it would continue reading that input. Go to sleep, come back the next day, and watch 3/4 of all non-boss attacks miss Brian completely.

Certainly came in handy during my ultimate challenge run (Fire and Wind spells only, no healing or magic barrier)...until Begis, at least. He rarely misses, and not getting hit the whole game didn't do much good for my defense and health stats. >_<

 

[ae86gamer]

I haven't done it.. yet. But I do know someone who did the same thing to get the Genocide achievement in L4D.

 

[AvsJoe]

I've never done this. In GTA: San Andreas you have to do the two hours of swimming to qualify for a story mission and I do it every time. I can see the appeal of doing this though, spending your time much more wisely than holding an analog stick for a couple of hours doing very little in a game.

yeah, a rubber band was your friend there.

Congrats on the first post and Welcome to the Escapist! Hope you enjoy it here and please turn off the lights before you leave.

 

[internetzealot1]

In Morrowind, I went into sneak mode, went into a room with some people, hid behind a shelf, and did something else until my sneak went up a few levels.

 

[Vrex360]

I never did anything like that in Oblivion, in fact I just jumped a lot and my skill just increased really fast. Seriously I just love jumping so I did that all the time.
In fact I don't think I ever ground game time to upgrade, I just did a lot of dicking around between levels and it boasted my stats really quick.

 

[the1ultimate]

Personally I think that this is what the console is for.

I usually make Athletics one of my major skills because it takes so long to level up. If I level up my magic skills up as minor skills, then I my midas magic spells can do some real damage.

Of course I only do that because I've already beaten Oblivion (several times of course) and I just like wondering around enjoying the sandbox and pwning enemies whenever I encounter them.

 

[link141]

Once in midnight club la in order to get the Audi R8.

 

[Flour]

Right now I just taped my analog stick to be held moving forward so my character is swimming by herself while I do something else that isn't boring. And just when my character hit land I quickly turned her around to swim the other way, so I gotta check back in 5 minutes or so.

Imperial city, merchant district(I think), there's a place with water where you can swim in a corner. It will raise your athletics without having to do anything, so you can check back every 10-15 minutes to see if you got a skill up message.

There's also a house in Bruma(I think, all those wooden houses look the same) where you can jump on a table near a wall and get yourself somewhat stuck between it, a chair and the ceiling. You can easily level acrobatics there because you jump, hit the ceiling, bounce back to the 'ground', and you can jump again. You should be able to get at least two jumps per second, but only if you get stuck and move towards the wall to keep yourself in that place.

I only used the second trick once, that was before I got in the habit of jumping everywhere, which made me use the first exploit to get some athletics.(tied to dodging IIRC)

 

[Guy32]

I do it sometimes, but not often with athletics; mostly acrobatics and non-attack spells. I got Morrowind and Oblivion on PC specifically so I could cheat when I got bored of playing normally.

Which is 95% of the time.

 

[Veret]

Definitely nothing to be ashamed of. If you're in the position of not wanting to play, it can only be the developer's fault.

On the PC, though, you can just open up the console and enter a command to instantly level up the skill of your choice. Or just outright set the skill level to 100. Or set the player's run speed to something higher. Or slow your enemies down. Or get a mod to shrink the map, or let you fly, or turn gravity off, or alter the damn leveling system so it doesn't make you do this sort of shit. Oblivion is a really great game...on the PC.

 

[martin's a madman]

On the Emulator Visual Boy Advance,you have the option of speeding up the time, when I play Pokemon I do this to train. Similar idea.

 

[Mcface]

So you know how in Oblivion your Athletics skill goes up slowly when you run and swim? Well that obviously takes FOREVER as a minor skill, so I basically have to swim for hours to raise it. And well...

Right now I just taped my analog stick to be held moving forward so my character is swimming by herself while I do something else that isn't boring. And just when my character hit land I quickly turned her around to swim the other way, so I gotta check back in 5 minutes or so.

I really don't think I should be ashamed of doing this, especially since all the other skills go up much faster this one is way too tedious to raise alone so I have no problem doing this.

Has anyone else ever done this or have seen someone else do this? I seriously doubt it, the only time this comes to mind is in Yahtzee's video of Super Paper Mario when he suggests that you hold down the move button when running in a hamster wheel, or when he said that you train your skills in EVE online by selecting which skills to train and turning off the game.

EDIT: I tried using a rubber band first but on the 360 it doesn't work when putting it on one analog stick only, though I might try pulling both sticks towards each other.

EDIT 2: Found a less elastic and thicker rubber band to hold the left analog stick forward and a thinner more elastic rubber band to hold the right analog stick right, so my character is swimming in circles.

...why are you doing this? It's a single player game..